A buff to burst cooldowns would make enh more cd dependant => not good seeing how enh is currently only being awesome in single target (both pve and pvp) while popping all their stuff

A buff to passive stuff like imbues and Static Shock, Searing Totem and Flame Shock dot would place more importance on uptime both in pve and pvp => not good looking at how enh has the worst gap closing and with cooldowns on abilities is more uptime dependant than a recource based spec like rogues, who can unload and refill while having to wait for reengaging. Also FS is likely less used due to FrS for kiting and ES for the debuff, with ST probably destroyed, outranged or LOSed every now and then (or attacking not the focused target).

The middle ground would be active dmg abilities like SS, LL, UE:WF and the like, since they can counted for sustained damage due to relatively low cooldowns, as well as burst (Ascendence, our strongest cd, would be nothing without SS). We're not as uptime dependant as with imbues either, since all we need is contact every 8-10 seconds to have full damage, a relatively low loss when exceeded slightly.

According to minds, enh has taken a dive in rankings since 5.2, and damage outside of cooldowns is meh. This would help in both areas. This also pushes burst during cds, so there's left to see how it will pan out during cooldown phases, in pve, but even more so in pvp.

If enh pvp wounds up like bm in 5.0, there'll be heavy nerfs as a result, and frankly, enh doesn't have high quality anywhere outside of cd burst right now.
-shaman cc is weak (hex, CPT)
-purge nerfed
-mobility and gap closing is weak
-totems back to 5hp one hit wonders, not leaving out elemental brackets and more => weakest utility
-still lacking in survival even with survival talents, SR and glyphed msw heals

tbh, I'd welcome even a decent nerf to overall damage if the above issues were properly adressed, but they wont be. I've no idea what blizzard's up to, but making a large scale shaman overhaul isn't part of the plan.
Also as others have pointed out, ele is still worse of than enh apparently, so why only enh specific buffs? Do they expect the 5% malus from the lb glyph being gone makes so much a dps gain?

Last edited by Omanley; 2013-04-13 at 09:18 AM.

Originally Posted by Angoth

I'm sorry that Blizzard won't just gift wrap awesome in a cup and let you drink your fill.

I disagree Protoman, in pvp enhance has probably the lowest sustained dmg of all the melee classes. Personally, i still believe, utility buffs would be lot more, letting us use totams during silence, our totems gets buffed which only affects us (stoneclaw totem) or changing capacitator, than just pure dmg buffs.

Make no mistake, im not against these buffs, enhance needs lot of help, but i think, this isn't the right way to adress our class. We should shine as we used to in the role of anti caster, specially now that locks, mages, boomkins and some elementals gets more and more popular in rbgs/arenas.

I can't speak for PvP, but on the PvE side, I think that Omanley is right on the money, that this is a middle-ground buff, that will benefit both burst, AND sustained DPS.

I think, possibly, that the 2-piece tier 15 bonus may be another cornerstone to our overall damage, in 5.2. I just downgraded, yesterday, from a 510 ilvl, to 509, when I got 2 pieces of tier, from LFR. I figured that had to be the nail in the coffin, forcing a change out of EotE/UF, to AS/UF, as the trash/AoE default talents. Also, I figured it forced SS into a higher priority than UE, even with having the UF talent.

What I saw, from the LFRs I ran, after that, was that I was had around a 35% increase on my AoE trash DPS. On one double-pack pull, I was sustaining over 200k (MW5_CL > FN) while we had the most adds alive. That dropped to roughly 129k when the last add was dead. This is much better than I've been seeing, with EotE/UF (this was without using any CDs). Also, at the end of LFR Horridon, I finished with 139k (which most certainly was with trying to maximize every CD I had, as well as flasking, and double-potting).

Just comparing that to recent LFRs, I'm seeing a very noticeable AoE improvement. I'm curious to see how it translates to our 10 normals, because I'm sure it will drop, due to actually having to worry about mechanics, instead of focusing on rotation.

And, I'm sure that other enhancers can put out significantly more damage, at the same ilvl. I'm just putting this out there, in case it helps anyone else who considers SimC to only be one of many sources of information to factor.

I disagree Protoman, in pvp enhance has probably the lowest sustained dmg of all the melee classes. Personally, i still believe, utility buffs would be lot more, letting us use totams during silence, our totems gets buffed which only affects us (stoneclaw totem) or changing capacitator, than just pure dmg buffs.

Make no mistake, im not against these buffs, enhance needs lot of help, but i think, this isn't the right way to adress our class. We should shine as we used to in the role of anti caster, specially now that locks, mages, boomkins and some elementals gets more and more popular in rbgs/arenas.

I think the low sustained pvp damage is at least partly due to having to give up FT for FB (lots of damage sources involved), FS/ES for FrS and msw for heals/hex.
These heavy dmg restrictions upon going pvp make for harder balancing, since buffing dmg for pvp will do the same for pve, which isn't as restricted and therefor may come of as to strong.
And other spells aren't all that much reliable, like ST and Feral Spirits. We have no real control, which can be crucial at times. The wolves aren't what they used to be, but just one or two losses due to wolves or searing not attacking the 2% enemy player would cause me eating my keyboard, and it can make a difference, I'm sure.

Rogues for example are now 1utility/1dmg in terms of poisons, no changing that. As such, there's not as much damage loss involved as there was in the old days of instant/deadly and crippling/wound. Rogues do give up damage through spending cps for finishers like kidney, 'tis true. But that's about it.

The thing about utility/our ancient purpose of anti caster: the devs are not spec specific enough when it comes to shamans. What's the hurt in making Wind Shear shorter cooldown for enh/ele again, as they are under represented anyway? Or giving 2dispell purge for enh/ele only? It's not like dps shams would skyrocket to gladiator with it.

Originally Posted by Angoth

I'm sorry that Blizzard won't just gift wrap awesome in a cup and let you drink your fill.

The Buff in PTR If Implimented are good but wouldn't save enhancement shamans in the long run. As alot of people are saying what we really need is better Aoe, A new CC or alternetivily a passive that reduce damage taken or the duration of any CC's. stronger sustained DPS, totems have 10% of our total health, along with shocks no longer sharing CD and a means to better reach our targets as well as more decent ranged Dps that is strong and sustainable but not at the same level as actual Ranged DPS:

1: One way to to inprove AoE should to turn LL to cleve attack that deals 75-90% damage to another nearby target, windfury when it procs should deal 50% to all enermies within melee range, chain lightining should be an instant cast spell and finally Fire nova should cause Enhan shamans to release a ring of fire that deals damage to all enermies within 10 yard and release lesser fire novas from enermies with flame shock.

2:Pre-mop enhacement have talent called toughtness which increase starmina and reduces the duration of snares. Such a passive should return for enhacement shamans along with an passive that reduces the duration of stuns and other CC's. all shamans should have the old astral shift from Wotlk in case the fromer is too powerful or visa vesa.

3: Our shocks should have charges similar to a warlocks hand of gul'dan. we should have 3 charges that recharge every 4 sec.

4: Lightning bolt's should be buffed slightly along with having it's cast time reduced to 2 secs.

In short while the buff to our damage is great. instead to granting a massive boost in damage to our melee abilities, Blizzard should just increase the damage done by our physical attack by 10-25% as well as increasing the damage done by our spell. that way our sustained and AoE damage will be much stronger.

The Buff in PTR If Implimented are good but wouldn't save enhancement shamans in the long run. As alot of people are saying what we really need is better Aoe, A new CC or alternetivily a passive that reduce damage taken or the duration of any CC's. stronger sustained DPS, totems have 10% of our total health, along shocks no longer sharing CD and a means to better reach our targets as well as more decent ranged Dps that is strong and sustainable but not at the same level as actual Ranged DPS:

1: One way to to inprove AoE should to turn LL to cleve attack that deals 75-90% damage to another nearby target, windfury when it procs should deal 50% to all enermies within melee range, chain lightining should be an instant cast spell and finally Fire nova should cause Enhan shamans to release a ring of fire that deals damage to all enermies within 10 yard and release lesser fire novas from enermies with flame shock.

2:Pre-mop enhacement have talent called toughtness which increase starmina and reduces the duration of snares. Such a passive should return for enhacement shamans along with an passive that reduces the duration of stuns and other CC's. all shamans should have the old astral shift from Wotlk in case the fromer is too powerful or visa vesa.

3: Our shocks should have charges similar to a warlocks hand of gul'dan. we should have 3 charges that recharge every 4 sec.

4: Lightning bolt's should be buffed slightly along with having it's cast time reduced to 2 secs.

In short while the buff to our damage is great. instead to granting a massive boost in damage to our melee abilities, Blizzard should just increase the damage done by our physical attack by 10-25% as well as increasing the damage done by our spell. that way our sustained and AoE damage will be much stronger.

With the MQ change it's estimated our spells will do ~18% more damage. This means our AoE will be 18% more powerful since its all spells

A buff to burst cooldowns would make enh more cd dependant => not good seeing how enh is currently only being awesome in single target (both pve and pvp) while popping all their stuff

A buff to passive stuff like imbues and Static Shock, Searing Totem and Flame Shock dot would place more importance on uptime both in pve and pvp => not good looking at how enh has the worst gap closing and with cooldowns on abilities is more uptime dependant than a recource based spec like rogues, who can unload and refill while having to wait for reengaging. Also FS is likely less used due to FrS for kiting and ES for the debuff, with ST probably destroyed, outranged or LOSed every now and then (or attacking not the focused target).

The middle ground would be active dmg abilities like SS, LL, UE:WF and the like, since they can counted for sustained damage due to relatively low cooldowns, as well as burst (Ascendence, our strongest cd, would be nothing without SS). We're not as uptime dependant as with imbues either, since all we need is contact every 8-10 seconds to have full damage, a relatively low loss when exceeded slightly.

According to minds, enh has taken a dive in rankings since 5.2, and damage outside of cooldowns is meh. This would help in both areas. This also pushes burst during cds, so there's left to see how it will pan out during cooldown phases, in pve, but even more so in pvp.

If enh pvp wounds up like bm in 5.0, there'll be heavy nerfs as a result, and frankly, enh doesn't have high quality anywhere outside of cd burst right now.
-shaman cc is weak (hex, CPT)
-purge nerfed
-mobility and gap closing is weak
-totems back to 5hp one hit wonders, not leaving out elemental brackets and more => weakest utility
-still lacking in survival even with survival talents, SR and glyphed msw heals

tbh, I'd welcome even a decent nerf to overall damage if the above issues were properly adressed, but they wont be. I've no idea what blizzard's up to, but making a large scale shaman overhaul isn't part of the plan.
Also as others have pointed out, ele is still worse of than enh apparently, so why only enh specific buffs? Do they expect the 5% malus from the lb glyph being gone makes so much a dps gain?

I argee. If shamans are to excel in DPS. I think that LL and SS should be neffed but in return give them a passive that increases all weapon damage done by around 10% or so. That way we would be able to deal more damage outside Ascentance, spell damage should not be an issue if the buff for MQ is gonna stick.

In terms of damage up time,I would like to see searing totem as a 1 min damage CD that last for 30 secs but deals 200-300% more damage and has a 5-yard so that you would have to consantly move it around all the time while searing flames now proc from the weapon imbues with FT weapons

As for survival and gap closers we should have an passive that reduces damage taken by 5-10%, increase movement speed by 15% and reduces the duration of snares and roots by 20-35% and Ascendance should grant CC immunity.

Anyone who says our AOE is fine has never had that "Oh Sh-t" moment where you are in need of burst AOE but your LvL was on CD or forget to re-apply FS to the main target 3s before it falls off and waste LvL because the spreading doesn't work like Pestilence.

Worst thing is that we're probably going to be hit so effin' hard with the nerfbat in a week or two because of those buffs (looks absolutely ridiculous to me) as I am already doing very high single target damage, can't see how those buffs are needed in a PvE scenario.

Would rather have they reworked how our AoE works so that it doesnt take 3 globals just to get started.

I disagree Protoman, in pvp enhance has probably the lowest sustained dmg of all the melee classes. Personally, i still believe, utility buffs would be lot more, letting us use totams during silence, our totems gets buffed which only affects us (stoneclaw totem) or changing capacitator, than just pure dmg buffs.

Make no mistake, im not against these buffs, enhance needs lot of help, but i think, this isn't the right way to adress our class. We should shine as we used to in the role of anti caster, specially now that locks, mages, boomkins and some elementals gets more and more popular in rbgs/arenas.

Well as pointed out, the buffs to SS and LL will buff our burst and sustained kinda.....but sustained DPS isn't all that great in PVP anyways because you are never on a target long enough to maximize it. I would think Enhance has good sustained DPS with stuff like LS procs, WF, OH imbues, and hasted melee swings....the problem is we are not on targets long enough to let them do much damage as opposed to PVE where we can and you see stuff like LS, WF, and FT as our top DPS abilties. This is assuming sustained DPS is mainly passive damage, in PVP I look at sustained DPS in a broader sense where its being able to do constant, steady DPS to a target....I would think Enhance does that well enough with our abilities and passive damage, even at range we can use ULE and shocks.

The problem is "on demand burst", since stuff like LL has to be used right away to maintain our normal DPS and you can't store a 5SF LL just to time for bursting someone down during a switch or whatever, so our burst mainly comes from long CD's and not really thru using our abilities in quick sucession (at the cost of more resources or something like a warrior or rogue might do, putting up alot of burst in a small window but leaving them low on resources afterwards). Since we lack a true resource and are more CD based that is why I suggested some new ability on a short, ~30sec CD to let us use a fully buffed LL for free giving us a way to chain abilties together real fast for on demand burst, OR allowing MW5 to stack up to 10 which gives us a way to chain 2 LB's or store a MW5 for emergency heals and free up another MW5 to use more consistently for LB's instead of always saving MW5 for heals.

Regarding the recent buffs, I would have liked to see our ULE and Shocks buffed more instead of only SS and LL by spreading the buffs around a bit. I do agree with you about utility though, and making us the "anti-caster" niche again..... my suggestions for that were to buff Wind Shear so its either a 4 sec lockout or 9 sec CD, either one will give us a 33% lockout (4 sec lockout, 12 sec cd) which brings back some of the potency of our old wind shear when it was 2 sec lockout/ 5 sec CD (40% lockout).... rogues and monks have 5 sec lockout, 15 sec CD so 33% lockout is not unheard of.

I would like to see some buffs to Grounding and Purge as well. I think the silence nerf to totems should be reverted completely for all Shaman, its a rushed and poorly thought out nerf that should have been for Resto if anything at all. Bringing stoneclaw totem back would be great, as well as buffing capacitor so its not crap by itself. Giving us a passive 10%dmg reduction w/ LS would make alot more sense then the glyph, which is unecessarily complicated for no real reason.

And lastly we need a real gap closer if we really want to be competitive vs casters who can kite us. At the very least we need Imp GW glyph made baseline to give us a basic tool for mobility, and then I would make these changes:
-Remove the current pvp 4 set bonus and add that 40%dmg to LL baseline, remove it from FT (should have been done a while ago).
-NEW 4set PVP bonus is when you use ULE you gain a 50-60% sprint for 5 sec, and this sprint is less effected by snares (can't be brought below 100% run speed, maybe even 110 or 120%)..... this is similar effect as Unleash Fury FB, but you are not required to use FB and the sprint doesn't become useless when you are snared
-Make ULF FB give some other unique and interesting effect, it could root target, stun or knockdown target, or reduce casting/melee speed by 10/20% or something that will feel useful in PVP

I just don't like the limitation of FS only being spread to 4 mobs. Pushing it up to 7 or 8 would be much better.

Its only limited to 4 spreads for each LL, everytime you use LL again it spreads FLS to 4 more new targets with no cap so long as mobs don't die you can have like 4, 8, 12, ect. FLS's and FN's up

I do want to see improvements on our AoE though, its just not up to par. Our AoE is one of the only AoE rotations that requires and depends on single target abilities, we need both our shocks and LL CD's available to do proper AoE and both those abilties are used ASAP so usually on CD which makes switching to AoE difficult. They need to seperate our AoE from single target abilities, personally I think FN should be a targetable spell w/ a 10yd range and after the first explosion it applies 2 dots so the next time you use FN you get FNx3, and spread 2 dots again so next is FNx5, ect. Just like a Howling Blast or something which only requires HB and spreads its own diseases....make FN spread its own dot and use same ramp up mechanic.

In terms of damage up time,I would like to see searing totem as a 1 min damage CD that last for 30 secs but deals 200-300% more damage and has a 5-yard so that you would have to consantly move it around all the time while searing flames now proc from the weapon imbues with FT weapons

As for survival and gap closers we should have an passive that reduces damage taken by 5-10%, increase movement speed by 15% and reduces the duration of snares and roots by 20-35% and Ascendance should grant CC immunity.

Why give it a 5yd range? If its on a 1min CD that means you can't redrop it. I think Searing and Magma totem are fine having no CD, they are one of the last few totems that you can always have up and can redrop with no CD......the problem is stuff like Searing Flames which depends on Searing Totem.

I do agree about adding a passive 10% damage reduction, and having a true gap closer (my ideas are above like baseline Imp GW and improved sprint on ULE) but bringing back our passive 15% run speed plus some snare/root reduction would be a great idea.....and I also agree that Ascendance needs some more CC immunities, not everything but atleast to certain CC like stuns and fears or also make it less avoidable like harder to dodge/parry.

Worst thing is that we're probably going to be hit so effin' hard with the nerfbat in a week or two because of those buffs (looks absolutely ridiculous to me) as I am already doing very high single target damage, can't see how those buffs are needed in a PvE scenario.

Would rather have they reworked how our AoE works so that it doesnt take 3 globals just to get started.

Keep in mind that many of the specs that currently perform at around enhancement's level (feral, ret, ww, hunters) are also receiving buffs. We're not being buffed in a vacuum.